MAIN STREET GOING SOUTH – The southern end of Main Street in Cotuit has seen better days.

Short-term solutions in short supply

“…and when she saw that he was a fine baby, she hid him three months. When she could hide him no longer she got a papyrus basket for him, and plastered it with bitumen and pitch; she put the child in it and placed it among the reeds on the bank of the river.” (Exodus 2: 2-3, New Revised Standard Version)

It seems that if baby Moses had been hidden in the reeds of Cotuit, he might have floated away right off the southern end of Main Street. On his way, he’d have had to negotiate potholes, walkers, environmental issues, permits, car oil, perch fishers, and frost heaves.

“My speed-dial to the pothole people is worn,” said Jessica Rapp Grassetti.

In an email to town manager John Klimm that she shared with local newspapers, Grassetti wrote of southern Main Street: “the condition of this road is severely degraded with large pieces of asphalt strewn over the road surface and along the precious pampas grass and walking edges. The section that is underwater has large areas of loss that are hidden when covered with water and subsequently freeze…Poor drainage and frost heaves have contributed to the road becoming a dangerous public way and an unsightly nuisance.”

Town Engineer Bob Burgmann prescribes “a better sea connection” as a cure for the road’s woes. He said that pipes under the road that would carry water from one side to the other would be a likely solution to the flooding, but that to accommodate those pipes, some existing marsh would need to be buried “and we’d be trying to start [a new area of marsh] from scratch.”

The permitting process for such a project would take “at least” a year, said Burgmann, who said that his office is looking at plastic materials similar to what are now being used in conservation projects in Lewis Bay.

The southern Main Street project “is on our horizon,” said Burgmann. “Maybe in the next couple of years.”

Grassetti, who grew up in Cotuit, said that she once followed the sources of the waters of Rushy Marsh.

“From Santuit Pond,” she said, “the water flows down the Santuit River into bogs and Shoestring Bay. From there they go into Fuller’s Marsh on the east side of Crocker Neck, and then the Pinquixet Cove, the westernmost water in the town of Barnstable.” From the cove, Grassetti said, the waters drain into Rushy Marsh.

Grassetti agrees with Burgmann that there are a lot of conflicting needs to balance in the management of the marsh. People still fish for perch there, and, she said, the marsh “needs to remain brackish and flushed, yet the road can suffer because of” the needs of nature.

She wrote in her e-mail, “It would seem to me that the continued ponding and flooding of the roadway is very likely contributing to the exposure of the sensitive wetlands to vehicle oils/fluids and road salts.”

Grassetti said that she hopes for a safe way to walk in the area. There has been so much flooding on southern Main Street, she said, that she saw “a traffic cone half-submerged” and “construction workers who drive too fast” for the conditions.

“It’s not a very welcoming place to see,” Grassetti said of the area, where, she said, “the time for patching is done.”

Grassetti suggested a temporary fix for the problem of flooding at the south end of Main Street until the town can sort through the permitting and engineering necessities that affect “some of the highest property values in Cotuit.”

“Maybe there could be a walkway” through Rushy Marsh, she suggested. Right now, she said, “there’s no safe way to walk through” the scenic area.

Grassetti acknowledged “one good thing about the poor condition of the road”: she said that because of the potholes and the flooding, “some of the kids drive slow.”